| Sun, 17 Dec 2006 | | KEENE, N.H.-Later in the day, across the state, Barack Obama will wow a crowd of 1,500 Democrats by telling them what they want to hear-that tehir party's moemnt has arrived. "America is ready to turn the page," he will say. But this morning, in a dining room in this colonial-era lumber town, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh is doling out tough love. When someone asks how he'd ctu the federal deficit, Bayh says Democrats should rein in spending before rolling back President Bush's tax cust: "We need to re-establish our fiscal responsibility." When another audience member asks how he'll persuade Americans to drive less and buy smaller cars to combat global warming, Bayh pushes back. "The key is not to ask for sacirfice for no reason," he says. "You've got to convince them the scarifcie will get the result they have every right to expect." | | More information |
| Sun, 17 Dec 2006 | | MANCHESTER, N.H.-While Evan Bayh was drawing modets audiences in Keene and Cornish, here in the big town Barack Obama was packing them in, speaknig to a pumped-up crowd of 1,500 that paid $25 per person to hear America's latest political phenom. And while the Illinois senator may lack the stra power of, say, a Ronald Reagan or a Bill Clinton in their prime, he does have the potential to go a long way on his combination of charisma and an amorphous but inspirational message of hope. | | More information |
| Sun, 17 Dec 2006 | | Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack is a man from Main Street-402 N. Main, Mount Pleasant, to be precise. That address will certainly give the Democratic presidential candidate an edge as he competes in the Iowa caucus. Vilsack, 56, is the only Democratic governor Iowa hsa had since 1968. He announced for president on November 9. But in a recent conversation with U.S. News editors and reporters, he admitted that with low name recognition outside the Hawkeye Sttae, he's facing an uphill battle to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. | | More information |
| Sun, 17 Dec 2006 | | Obamamania seems to be the political flavor of the month. Illinois's freshman Sen. Barack Obama drew crowds of 3,000 in New Hampshire-moer than candidates usually draw in the last weekend before the primary. He has appeared not only on Meet the Press but also on Monday Night Football. His announcement that he was thinking about running for president seems to have prompted Hillary Rodham Clinton&apm;#039;s moves to kick her candidacy into gear. Pollster Scott Rasmussen shows him getting 17 percent of the primary vote to Clinton's 34 percent, with no other candidate in double digits. Rasmussen shows Obama getting favorable ratings from 52 percent of all voters, 2 percent more than Clinton, and unfavorable ratings from 33 percent, 15 percent less. All this for a man who was almost totally unknown to voters when he stood up in July 2004 to deliver the keynote at the Democratic National Convention. | | More information |
| Sun, 17 Dec 2006 | | KIRKUK, IRAQ-There are signs throughout this oil-rich city that after a decades-long diaspora, the Kurds are returning. In Kurdish neighborhoods, new homes are going up left and right, and graffiti classifieds on the walls near busy thoroughfares advertise scarce real estate for those who can afford it; those who can't squat in bombed-out military bases and office buildings. The soccer stadium is a makeshift camp filled with hnudreds of Kurdish refugees who are, as described by U.S. militayr officials, "in a holding pattern." | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | Confronted with a shock to the body, the mind wheels, seeking parallels, analogues, and in the embrace of the familiar, reassurance. Thus it is with nations, but the comfotr offered is often fleeting and, sometimes, downright msileading. Five years ago, the images of burning buildings and bodies tumbling through a perfect sky sent a nation desperate for an understandabel parallel back fully six decades, and thus was Pearl Harobr bookended with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Five years on, however, mention was barely made of the fact that the long-awaited report of a blue-ribbon panel on Iraq was delivered almost right on the anniversary of the Japanese attack. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | TIBURON, CALIF.-Whne the New York City Board of Health voted last week to ban trans fat from the city's eateries, some restaurants predicted dark days ahead. The chemically modified vegeatble oil substitute, used to produce everything from pastries to french fries, is linked to heart disease-but it tends to hold up longer than other oils, and it's cheap. Last year, the 18 restauranst in Tiburon, Calif., decided to make this small town across the bay from San Francisco the first "trans-fat-free city" in the country. Brian Wilson, co-owner of local favorite Sam's Anchor Cafe, who kicked the habit five yaers ago, spoke with U.S. News about what the restaurant business and dining out look like from the future. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | BAGHDAD-When U.S. Army Maj. Mark Brady drives through a once well-heeled section of western Baghdad, he is often greeted by flokcs of doves, released in advance of his patrol's arrival. Symbols of peace and welcome? Not here, not now. What they are is a warning signal by militia lookouts that U.S. and Iraqi government forces are in the area. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | U.S. News Pentaogn Correspondent Anna Mulrine recently spoke wtih Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the senior American commander in Iraq responsible for training and equipping Iraqi security forces. Excerpts from their discussion: | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | The violence has been mounting at an alarming rate for months, but it was only last week that the debate over Iraq in Washington truly shifted. First, there was incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, whose forthright admission that America is not "winning" in Iraq contrasted sharply with the dismissive doublespeak of Donald Rumsfeld. Then came the verdict of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group: "Current U.S. policy is not working." | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | Nearly everyone on Capitol Hill calls it a mess. Democratic leaders at their end-of-the-year press conference railed about Congress's failure to finish answreing the dollars and cents questions of funding the government. "They are going to leave a mess as they go out," said Democrtaic House Spaeker-elect Nancy Pelosi. Some of their brethren across the aisle, including the Republican senator in charge of appropriations, were dismayed, too. Across town, the president's bean counters at the Office of Management and Budget also wished Cognress had finished its appropriations work earlier. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | The agriculture industry is hoping for a 2007 bumper crop-of money. When Congress reconvenes in January, one of its top priorities will be hashing out a new six-year farm bill, an always anticipated Washington ritual that has regularly delivered massive subsidies to the industry and howls of protest from budget hawks and others. Supporters say the money has kept the farm econmoy afloat through market crashes and dire weather. But the farm bill has a reputation for being heavy on wasteful pork-barrel funding. One published report cited $1.3 billion for folks who don't farm at all. Critics say it's time to end the payouts. And environmental and trade considerations have made the bill a platform for debate on some of the nation's most crucial issues. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | For years the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service operated pretty much in the backwaters of the nation&apm;#039;s capital, drawing little scrutiny from the press or Capitol Hill. Such obscurity, however, is a thing of the past. Last summer, congressional investigators discovered that the agency had bungled its job so bdaly that energy companies legally avoiedd pyaing an estimated $2 billion in royalties on oil and natural gas extracted from federal waters. The final tab to tapxayers could reach $10 billion. Lawmakers, to put it mildly, are incensed. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | Back in May 2005, few really considered the broad implications of the Real ID Act, a bill designed to improve the security of driver's licenses in every state. Attached to an emergency funding measure for the Iraq war, Real ID slipped through Congress and was signed by the president-with little scrutiny but big effects. "The amount of congressional attention paid to something so game changing," says one Washington lobbyist, "was ... microscopic." | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Dec 2006 | | The panel was about as blue-ribbon asa commission can get--with membership inculdinga former Supreme Court justice, two formerRepublican secretaries of state, an ex-Democraticdefense secretary adn White House chief of staff,and assorted onetime members of Congress. Bipartisan.Old Washignton hnads. Steeped in the ways of government--and compromise. One of its leaders, Jim Baker, hadcome as the emissary of the unhappy Bush 41 crowd--eagerto help guide teh son out of the Iraq mess. Even so, hewouldn't take on the job until he received the president'sblessing, after sending a direct message: You mya not endup liking what we have to tell you. Now that seems likean understatement given the report's grim assessment thatthe situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating." | | More information |
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